Pictures Are Worth a 1,000 Words

by Lena-Nsomeka Gomes

I am currently Washington Editor for Gannet News Service; I oversee coverage of Congress, politics and national security. Before that, I was a Washington correspondent for the Dallas Morning News. I have spent much of my career covering Congress and Washington. I have been very involved in diversity issues through the Asian American Journalists Association, of which I was president in 1999 and in 2000. I was also president of Unity in 1999 when the conference was held in Seattle.

As an editor, I do make story assignments. Iíll give you a good example of how issues of diversity come up. One of our reporters was doing a story about political ads on web blogs. He was looking for different sources and I had suggested someone who was very active in helping Democratic candidates. That person happened to be Asian American. I try to help reporters in the job I do now to expand their resources and their rolodexes. Any time someone comes up to me and asks for suggestions about sources, I encourage them to call people who they may not normally call, people who sometimes happen to be of color. Having been involved in organizations like AAJA has helped me become a resource for other journalists. I may not know everything about the Asian American community and I certainly donít know everything about the Filipino community of which my family and ancestors are from, but I may know something that somebody else doesnít know.

I think it has helped me see things differently and to expand my own horizons. I have learned a lot from my colleagues in the black, Hispanic and Native American journalists associations about their cultures and their community concerns, and I hope they have learned something similar from me as well. Everybody brings a different story to the table and everybody is informed by their own background and upbringing. What I may see as a Filipino woman who grew up in the SF Bay Area may be different from a reporter who grew up in the Washington suburbs who is white and Jewish. In essence, I think we are all here to help each other.

I remember an incident when I was living in Dallas and working as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. There was an advertisement for an airline. The airline was promoting its new routes from Dallas to China. The image that was in the ad was of a character who had a round face and slanted eyes. I was really offended by it because I thought it was a caricature. It struck me, even back then, and this was a long time ago, that people sometimes donít understand that we need to be fair and accurate of all the portrayals we have in the paper whether itís in word, graphics or visuals. If youíre writing a story about welfare and the picture you run on page 1A next to that story about welfare is a black woman, you are painting an inaccurate picture of welfare in America. Just like if you write stories or run photos of Asian Americans who happen to do well in school, youíre also perpetuating the stereotype of the model minority. It doesnít tell the story of the struggle that student may have had to get there. It doesnít tell the complete story of that family. Sometimes I think editors that sit around the table and decide what the news is are well intentioned, but sometimes, we donít stop and think and ask, ìHey, what are we really saying with this picture or this graphic?î I really have become more aware of the process now as an editor because I work in conjunction with graphic artists and photographers about selecting images. Itís something that we need to do a better job of, particularly in the print media. For instance, I think there was a lot of concern about the Iraq war about what should be shown in pictures. How do you communicate the tragedy and the horror of war and how far do you go? I think those are the questions you need to ask all of the time.

Yes, yes. I also remember a time when I was a reporter in Dallas covering a gay pride parade. Dallas has a very huge and active gay and lesbian community. I remember my editor at the time talking to me and the photographer who were going out on the assignment saying, ìLook, you know, donít come back with a picture of these buff, muscular, well- oiled men in tank tops and muscle shirts because thatís only one slice of the community.

No, he wasnít. I thought it was a real sophisticated and sensitive issue to bring up. It also just explained that you donít have to be gay or a person of color to be sensitive to these issues. Iíll never forget next to the story of mine, the next day, there was a picture of four men carrying a Texas flag. That was one of the images that were reflective of the parade that I covered.

I canít speak for all editors and newsrooms. I think photojournalists and graphic artists who do charts and graphics for newspapers think of themselves as journalists. They see things through their own eyes and lenses. Thatís why I wrote that tip because when we think about the words weíre going to write we think about the questions weíre going to ask, the quotes we use and about the people we quote. But we also need to go one step more and think about the words we choose in headlines and the images that we pick that go in the paper. We have to ask, ìIs this the right image, is this the right one to tell the story?î

I think this is about good journalism. Sometimes I think our colleagues who are not people of color think that we want special treatment in the news, but thatís not what weíre saying. We want to do good journalism. And good journalism means being sensitive to your surroundings, being fair and accurate, avoiding labels and stereotypes, and telling a complete story of whatever your subject may be. I disregard the whole notion that what weíre doing is just for ìminority issues.î Itís not. In all of these tips, if you took out the words race and ethnicity, it applies to just being good journalists.